Saturday\u2019s lunchtime meeting between Newcastle United and Chelsea produced a high-energy, two\u2011halves encounter and a refereeing debate that dominated the postmatch discussion. Chelsea were blunt in the first half and could have been substantially behind at the interval, while a second-half Reece James free-kick brought the visitors back into the game. Aaron Ramsdale may feel he could have done more to keep that set-piece out.<\/p>\n
The key controversy followed a heavy collision between Gordon and Trevoh Chalobah. Referee Andy Madley waved play on and VAR Peter Bankes reviewed the incident after an earlier semi-automated offside problem had already led to scrutiny of Woltemade\u2019s goal. Supporters in the Gallowgate End and commentators on the TNT Sports coverage were vociferous; Ally McCoist described the challenge as \u201cstonewall.\u201d Joe Cole said Chalobah had been overly forceful and that it was a penalty.<\/p>\n
VAR\u2019s assessment was later summarised on the Premier League Match Centre\u2019s X account: \u201cThe referee\u2019s call of no penalty to Newcastle was checked and confirmed by VAR\u2014with the contact from Chalobah on Gordon deemed to be side-to-side in a shielding action and the ball within playing distance.\u201d Former referee Darren Cann echoed the view that the incident was open to interpretation. \u201cAt normal speed I can understand why the referee didn\u2019t award a penalty. Chalobah certainly takes a risk in making such a challenge because there\u2019s clear contact with Gordon,\u201d he told BBC Sport. \u201cSo the decision was right to be reviewed by VAR, who came to the conclusion that a clear and obvious error had not been made and stayed with the on-field decision of no penalty. I do think that had a penalty been given, I believe the VAR would have stuck with that decision too. So this comes down to \u2018referee\u2019s call.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Newcastle manager Eddie Howe told TNT Sports: \u201cIn my opinion, yes. I think it\u2019s a clear penalty, I think anywhere else on the pitch that\u2019s a free-kick, the player\u2019s gone into Anthony aggressively, too aggressively in my opinion. I think it\u2019s a stonewall. No, because it\u2019s not [side by side shielding]. I think the defender\u2019s only look is Anthony and not the ball, I think it\u2019s too aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten minutes after the incident Jo\u00e3o Pedro levelled for Chelsea with his fifth Premier League goal of the season and the match finished 1-1. The decision on the Chalobah challenge remained the defining talking point from a lively midday fixture on Tyneside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VAR confirmed no penalty as Chalobah’s contact was judged shielding; match in Tyneside finished 1-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,194,969],"tags":[332,506,1215],"class_list":["post-5253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-newcastle-united","category-premier-league","tag-aaron-ramsdale","tag-anthony-gordon","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}